As marketing has been overrun by the idea of Inbound Marketing, it has become commonplace thinking that sales is less and less important. Many of us believe that the digital sales funnel of landing pages, lead baits and autoresponders are all that is needed. The more sophisticated marketers understand how to automate their process even further with analytics resulting in segmentation into the proper persona. With all good intent, we assist (manipulate) our prospects into buyers and then into long-term customers through this magically and transformational path, we call the customer’s journey.
My beliefs are explained in these 2 blog posts: The Pull in Lean Marketing: Edges(2 of 2) & The Pull in Lean Marketing: Edges (1 of 2)
To some extent, this is true. But what the majority of people are believing is the idea and the importance of selling has diminished. Even more the idea of sales prospecting is not needed. What is one of the great sins of this thought has been transferred to start-ups where the term product/market fit is still completely unbalanced in the way of product. And when market fit is attempted, it is done in the bubble of the digital environment. Many people will center on creating that marketing funnel described above; measuring and adjusting for better conversion. I think it’s called funnel optimization.
The problem with most funnel optimizations are that we are missing the human component. As Dan Pink might say, To Sell Is Human. If we want to develop a solid marketing foundation, we must get prospects/customers involved to develop it. Prospecting should not be done as a last resource it should be the first resource we utilize and work from there.
Sales Prospecting is a Key Ingredient.
I presented this idea to Grant Leboff, who explores this landscape in his new book, Digital Selling: How to Use Social Media and the Web to Generate Leads and Sell More. We talked about sales prospecting in the digital world in yesterday’s podcast: Selling in the Digital World.
How effective can “digital” prospecting be? Do we do sometimes just need to do it the old-fashioned way? I ask that question in tomorrow’s podcast with Marylou Tyler, author of Predictable Prospecting: How to Radically Increase Your B2B Sales Pipeline. In Marylou’s description, I think you will find that outbound may not be all as traditional as you think. The podcast with Marylou: The New Era of Sales Prospecting